1. Field of the Invention
The field of the invention relates to systems and methods for facilitating, providing, and/or enabling anonymous transactions. In particular, the field of the invention relates to anonymous authentication of customer profile information to an authorized requester, including authentication of customer profile information related to children, and to consumer privacy protection when ordering merchandise by mail by not having to reveal consumer personal information to the merchant and/or shipper.
2. Description of the Related Art
Consumer privacy is becoming a focus of major public interest, especially as computing capacity increases and data handling and storage become easier and less expensive, and information databases are assembled to host a myriad of transactional information. This information, which may be gathered from a number of sources, is stored, categorized and sold. A prime information target is the retail transaction.
For example, for each credit card transaction, an issuer bank's computer system can store the merchant's name, the product purchased, and the amount of the transaction. The issuer bank or credit card company can use the collected information to determine the spending habits of their credit cardholders and then either use that information in its own business or make it available to others. In addition to the information stored in the issuer bank's computer system, as a consequence of a credit card transaction, the individual merchants receive information from the issuer bank about the credit cardholder. This information can be used to provide targeted marketing directed to the credit cardholder, or to provide others with information about the consumer's buying habits.
Membership cards, club cards and credit cards which link a transaction to an individual's database, reveal the purchase, the time of day of the purchase and the retail outlet. This information is then tied to a demographic which is sold to the direct marketing industry. In many cases these databases actually invade a person's privacy and are almost transparent to the unwitting consumer.
The consequences associated with the availability of an individual's spending information range from the merely annoying to the serious. At a minimum, an individual may receive more targeted junk mail than may be desired. More seriously, the same information that is used to target the individual for junk mail can also be used to target the individual for private or governmental harassment. For example, an issuer bank may choose to sell its customer list, with indicia that identifies all credit cardholders that have purchased sporting equipment, to retail sporting good companies. These companies may then inundate a credit cardholder with mail or other forms of advertisements. In a more serious situation, the issuer bank may sell its list of customers that have purchased certain goods (for example, furs or steaks) to activist groups that oppose the purchase of such items. These groups may then use the customer list to expose the credit cardholder to all sorts of harassment and perhaps physical injury.
One way an individual can avoid this problem is to pay for everything with bearer notes such as cash, since nothing on a bank note indicates who its owner is or was. This same property, however, makes cash fungible for both the owner and the thief. It is both easy to lose and easy to negotiate. For these reasons, few people desire to carry a large amount of cash. One way of solving this difficulty is to use electronic cash, as described in David Chaum, “Security without Identification: Transaction Systems to make Big Brother Obsolete,” Communications of the ACM, vol. 28, no. 10, pp. 1030–144, October, 1985. When electronic cash is used in an automated transaction, a purchase cannot be associated with a customer. The scheme, however, may be insecure against fraud; see Steven H. Low, et al., “Collusion in a Multi-Communications Protocol for Anonymous Credit Cards” submitted to IEEE/A CM 50, Transactions on Networking. In addition, since the electronic cash is given to a customer, a means is needed to prevent the individual from duplicating and spending it over and over again.
Apart from the opportunity to gather consumer information that arises from the use of a credit card or the like, consumer information also may be gathered when shipping information is provided to a merchant or other third party. It is therefore also desirable to protect the identify of consumers when ordering merchandise over the telephone or the Internet, or by any other means, when such merchandise is to be shipped to the residence or business of the consumer. Currently, the consumer generally has no choice but to give a proper mailing address to the merchant in order to receive the shipped goods. One solution to this problem is to use post office boxes. However, this solution is often expensive, inconvenient and/or requires the use of the consumer's real name.
Accordingly, a need exists for systems and methods for performing transactions that have the convenience and safety of card transactions, such as credit card transactions, and the anonymity of cash transactions. A need further exists for systems and methods for protecting the identity of consumers' names and addresses when a transactions include shipping or mailing to consumers. On or more of these needs are met by one or more embodiments of the present invention.